sandy@snoopy.cs.umass.edu (& Wise) (10/31/90)
Friday afternoon, my mother recieved her new Macintosh Classic 2/40,
and I recieved the call to come and install it...
Uncrating the Classic, the box contained:
System unit
New style keyboard
Mouse
System 6.0.6 and a note saying "install 6.0.7"
System 6.0.7
Documentation
Minimal HyperCard
The packaging designers really have given the Classic a once over, the
cabinet has a slightly curved face and the overall effect is very
attractive. The Classic has no lights on the front panel; while this
adds to the streamlined feel of the design, I would like to have power
and HD status lights. I suppose the display supplants a power light,
and one of the disk monitoring INITs could be installed...
The new keyboard is an odd shape, and the snap out feet do not tilt
the keyboard enough for my taste. More serious is that the Classic
only has one ADB port, and the mouse must be wired to the KB. Some
people like to type with the KB in their lap, and having the mouse
wired to KB makes this difficult. The feel is pleasant, although, for
a Unix user like myself, some keys are oddly placed -- i.e., the escape
key is adjacent to the spacebar (of course, my DEC LK201 keyboard
doesn't even have an escape key... you have to go hunt for it as ^[ or
F11!)
The system software has very few user visible changes: A brightness
CDEV (The Classic has no brightness knob), and an incompatibilty with
GateKeeper when running under the Finder.
Sound on the Classic: with the rear mounted speaker, I had trouble
hearing the system when there was a lot of background noise. As
others have noted, the sound manager clicks noticibly when an
application exits.
The Classic is acceptably responsive, it feels about the same as my SE
(If you want numbers both the new MACWORLD and MacUser have lots of
them :-). Percived performance is more important than actual
throughput for user bound applications and Word on the IIfx down the
hall is not very different...
Expandability may be a problem. The Classic motherboard doesn't have
a PDS slot or space for additional memory. The 2Meg configuration
uses a special daughter board that can hold up to 4Meg, the same RAM
limit of the Plus and SE. I suspect the new design will send the
accellerator manufacturers scrambling to have 030 upgrades for VM in
System 7...
When the final curtain falls on the Classic, it's a Mac. With
everything that motivated me to buy one, and with the closed
architecture that has plagued the compact Macs from the start.
The Classic is a worthy successor to the Plus, at a greatly improved
price, and EXACTLY what my mother needed -- an appliance computer for
Word and simple DTP, but the expansion capability of the SE (however
small) has been lost...
/s
--
Alexander Erskine Wise /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Software Development Laboratory
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ WISE@CS.UMASS.EDU /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\ This situation calls for large amounts of unadulterated CHOCOLATE! /\/\/\